Bravely Default Walkthrough, Part Eighteen: Eternia

- Welcome to the fourth chapter! You're now on Eternian soil, assuming you followed the waypoint. You don't have much choice here, since the gate ahead is shut; you'll have to go west and loop around to face the big golem to the south.

- (For the record, Grandship basically travels with you. To set off, hit the small ship icon that's appeared on your lower screen. Note that you need to be in a large enough space for Grandship to set down before you can use this option.)

Ice Golem

Though it's billed as a boss, the Ice Golem is really not that tough. It's susceptible to status ailments, for starters, and though its attacks are strong they're nothing fancy compared to, say, the Behemoth you just beat up. Default, unleash attacks, etcetera. As you can imagine, fire works quite nicely against this thing.

- Continue towards the city to the north. A cut scene follows, and then you're allowed in.

- Guess what? They sell stuff here! What a surprise in a town. This stuff is horribly expensive, so I recommend spending a bit of time outside Eternia leveling up so you can afford the choicest weapons, armor, and spells. (A few extra levels never hurt anyone either.) Just be warned that the monsters hereabouts are a fair bit stronger than what you've faced even in the previous dungeon, and though they offer substantial rewards they'll also kick your butt around quite a bit.

- Check the far right side of town. Between two villages, in a hidden spot where you'll disappear from view, is an Arctic Wind.

- Enter the building to the north. Speak to the woman on the top floor to trigger a cut scene. Edea's mom is a lot nicer than her dad.

- That settles that. Your next destination is Eternian Central Command. Watch the Party Chat after you're done in the hospital. It presents a choice: either you can take a short but difficult path, a middling and middling path, or a long but easy path to Command. The difficulty levels refer not to the random enemies along the way, but rather to the set monsters you'll have to face. The choice is yours.

- Regardless, your next trip is through Eternia's western gate. Head out!

Easy Path

The easy path is to the east when you leave Eternia. It's annoyingly circuitous, but it will free you from battles with boss monsters. You'll also discover tiny Gravemark Village. Check the southern graves in the Village for an Ice Charm, and speak to the old man for some back history, or to stay the night. A good place to level, but otherwise not a ton of use.

Medium Path

The Medium Path is west of Eternia. It swoops around to a large dragon. Along the way you'll across run just south of Vampire Castle, an optional locale that you can enter later in the game. For now, though, it's quite locked.

Dragon Zombie

Yikes. A slight step up on the difficulty scale, this, though far from impossible. The Dragon Zombie has two major attacks: either it will Bite, doing considerable damage, or it will use Poison Breath to hit everyone and inflict poison. Poison Breath is devastating if you're not keeping up with your healing consistently. Default, build up BP, and slam it with fire attacks. The Dragon Zombie has 25,000 HP, but when you kill it once it will come back to life and regain all of its HP. Prepare for a long slog that effectively amounts to a 50,000 HP battle.

Having trouble? One other thing to note: since it's undead, Dragon Zombie takes damage to restorative items and spells. You can therefore use high-healing items on it... or even kill it immediately with Phoenix Downs. They won't always work, though, so be prepared to try Phoenix Downs several times before the Dragon Zombie crumbles.

Hard Path

The Hard Path is west and north of Eternia. True to its name, it's a pleasant little jaunt to Eternian Central Command. It's also watched over by one painful enemy. Prepare yourself!

Guardian

Holy cow. This thing is ridiculous. It will spend much of the beginning of the battle buffing itself, adding to its evasion and building up its physical strength at the expense of defense. This seems easy enough for a while - at least until it attacks, anyway. Soon it will unleash Rocket Punch on your whole team, typically doing around 1,500 to 2,000 HP damage apiece, and will occasionally use normal physical attacks which will probably decimate a single character. Add onto this the fact that the Eternians outside the battle will strafe your team every three turns for roughly 1,500 HP of damage and you've got a terrible battle ahead.

My best advice here is to unload everything you've got as quickly as possible at the beginning of the battle. Hold nothing back. Guardian is weak to lightning, so spells like Thundaga and equipment bestowed with thunder-elemental attacks will help. You'll also want to be healing everyone consistently, as failing to do so - especially later on - will probably get everyone killed in a single round. Don't expect to win this battle easily (or at all!) unless you're at least a little over leveled.

- Regardless of the path you take, your course is set to the north. Eternian Central Command, here we come!